


D&D in desperate situations [not-fic]

by litra



Series: Notfic [21]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Accidental friendship, Blanket Permission, D&D, F/F, Games, M/M, accidental fix-it, not-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-10 03:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21461938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litra
Summary: The group start playing D&D as a way to pass the time. It becomes something more.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: Notfic [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/774375
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	D&D in desperate situations [not-fic]

**Author's Note:**

> like all my not-fic this idea is free to a good home. If anyone would like to take it and expand on it or whatever, go right ahead.

The members of the Magnus archives, playing D&D.  
  
Let us imagine that in one of their times when it wasn't safe to go outside someone tried to lighten the mood. Now obviously, they cannot go outside so their options are limited. Maybe someone found a deck of cards in the break room, and maybe that worked for a while. Except they quickly decided that any kind of poker or other betting game didn't work because one they don't have anything real to bet, and to it gets people to riled up. They do not need anyone holding a grudge right now and everyone's tensions are already high. 

Also, anyone game will only last an hour or two and then people get bored of it. They need something that will last a little bit longer. After talking this over someone remarks that they once had a game of D&D last all weekend.  
  
Responses to the suggestion of D&D are mixed. A few people think it's just a nerd game, while others have an open interest. Now, while you might assume that Martin was the one who suggested the game I'm going to go a slightly different route. It was Sasha. Doesn't matter if it's real Sasha or other Sasha, because a game like D&D where people pretends to be things they're not would appeal to the unknowing.  
  
So, eventually everybody gets talked around just because there's not much else to do and they hate thinking about the thing outside. Martin brings most of the snacks i.e. all of the cooked snacks, and plenty of tea. At least one other person brings a bag of chips but that's basically it. None of them have any physical equipment, i.e. dice or books or character sheets, because none of them can go outside to get anything. They all dutifully download a dice rolling app to their phones and Sasha has the manuals on PDF.  
  
Okay here's the fun part: characters. 

Now if Martin isn't the one who offered the game as an option he is definitely enthusiastic about playing it. He has never played before though and doesn't know quite what character to choose. He ends up making a Bard character because they can do a little bit of everything. Of course then he rolls poorly for at least one sat and ends up with extremely low Con and/or Dex.

The minute they start making characters John realizes he knows all the rules. This does not make him happy, or even get him interested. Mostly it just means he doesn't have to borrow Sasha's laptop when it's his turn. Is mostly there because the others say he needs to socialize more, and he is possibly in his suspicious phase where he wants to keep an eye on everyone because someone is a spy. His character is technically perfect, he fills in all the boxes and has a detailed list of all his equipment and weaponry and what pages they are on. The sections for background and inspiration are left blank. He is playing a fighter. He fights things. While he knows there is technically a storytelling aspect to this game, as he understands it the whole point is the fighting.  
  
Basira is skeptical but gets dragged in by Daisy who has heard good things about this game. During character creation they work out a joint backstory, and are generally interested in the role-playing and flirting through their characters then combat. Basira ends up creating a Druid because she finds out she can have a pet bear. Daisy chooses to be a Ranger for the next few hours makes constant jokes and references about Robin Hood men in tights.  
  
At first Tim thinks the whole thing is a joke. He makes the most ridiculous character you can think of out of pure stubbornness. He learns that there are more playable races then just in the core book, and then pesters John into giving him the stats far a dragon-born tiefling warlock, who can both use magic and dual wield a pair of swords. And because it's John helping him all the numbers are correct. It's a perfectly valid character. Sasha takes one look at the backstory Tim comes up with and decides to mess with him.  
  
Now, I'm not sure if I want Elias to be a part of this because he is the boss and that would make things awkward. But if he was invited then he would wait to make his character until most of if not all of the others had decided. He then talks to Sasha about what they need to balance the party, and he ends up playing a cleric because you can never have too many healers. He does a little bit of power gaming himself with his I know everything power and makes up another not quite min-maxed character. He's a lot subtler about it though and makes it look as though he was just picking things that were interesting. 

With a party this big Sasha doesn't make a personal NPC, but she does come up with several reoccurring characters all of whom have ulterior motives for everything.  
  
Playing the game:  
  
So the first session starts out pretty standard. Everyone getting used to the mechanics, and Sasha calling for different roles even when they aren't really needed to get everyone in the right mindset. Everyone quickly realizes that if they have a mechanical question John is the one to ask rather than Sasha. Sasha will play relatively loose with the rules especially in combat. This frustrates John to know end, but she says it makes the game more fun and the others mostly come down on her side of the fence.   
  
The party is hired to rescue a young girl from a group of bandits. A few good rolls get them the location of the bandit hideout and they had into the woods. Things nearly go south immediately, in that no one has any survival skills except the Druid. That's when Basira buys into the game.   
  
Once they locate the bandit hideout John starts to accidentally power play. He doesn't mean to, except Sasha is using blueprints from an actual castle somewhere, and John can't help but know them. He makes three correct turns without even thinking about it before Sasha makes him roll. Since he rolls poorly she sends him in the opposite direction making him even more frustrated. Except then they run into combat, and that's exactly what John designed his character for. He's able to work out a surprising amount of aggression on these random bandits.  
  
After that Sasha gets wise. She only loosely uses the real map, and throws in things like false doors that confuse John enough to get him out of his head. They find the little girl relatively easily, kill all the guards, and are all getting sets to bring her back to town when Martin thinks to ask if she's okay. She is not injured she is also not to the child they were told about. Martin makes a couple of high charm roles and get the whole story out of her. She was the child of a servant who was forced to take the real girls place, and then kidnapped so no one would notice. The real little girl is possibly being sacrificed to a cult, or possibly she just ran away.  
  
This sparks the first big in character discussion of the game. Tim is a little Shit and points out that they were paid to rescue the girl and it doesn't matter which girl it was. Martin wants to take the girl back to her family and then confront the people who hired them. Basira and Daisy start coming up with more and more elaborate plans to trap the people who hired them and force them to confess. John is still trying to figure out the whole role-playing aspect of the game. And if he is there, Elias is quietly sitting back and admiring the whole situation.  
  
Needless to say everyone comes back the following day/week/whatever.  
  
Other things that happen:  
  
Tim is constantly doing the most ridiculous thing he can think of just to see what will happen. The other characters all roll with it because early enough in the game he managed to seduce someone and got a bunch of valuable information out of it. After that they let him try crazy things and just stand back and then get them out of it when it inevitably goes south. 

Daisy and Basira spend more time flirting than they actually do playing at least until Basira's character gets killed. This rallies Daisy, who rallies the rest of the party. They try to take down the evil count but he gets away and instead she ends up swearing an oath of vengeance. They tried to get Basira's character resurrected but don't have nearly enough gold, and she ends up making a new character. By this point Basira is really into the mystery aspect that Sasha keeps bringing to the game. She creates a detective character who is really good at tracking people, has very high int and Wis, but only average charisma. And then proceeds to roll really terribly whenever they need to use charisma.  
  
Martin does not intend to flirt with John. It's more that because of John's character, and his general personality, John ends up playing a stoic character. Martin keeps trying to get John more involved. His character forcibly makes friends with Johns. He slowly manages to drag John out of his shell. He never comes up with the backstory for his character or anything, but John does start asking questions, and defending Martin's character in scenes, and coming out of his shell.  
  
If Elias has been joining them at some point he starts laying a trap of his own. He comes up with an elaborate backstory about something is God told him to do. For a while the group goes along with it because they think that it's something he worked out with Sasha. It's not. Sasha is in fact pissed that he keeps messing up her campaign. In retaliation she starts messing with him. She actually creates a mini campaign around what he is doing, and twists it back in on itself. He realizes what she's doing fairly quickly and decides to bow out elegantly. She is after all the GM. This is not an arena in which he can win. After that he stops coming to the game as much, saying that he has work to do.   
  
After they find out about Sasha, and Tim dies they don't play for a long time. They were in the middle of a campaign so there's definitely some regret, but even if they had notes on what would've happened (Sasha stopped keeping notes after John accidentally read them) it wouldn't be the same.  
  
Then one day Martin is cleaning out the break room, and John comes in and finds him. He's got all their old character sheet, and the equipment they scrounged together when they were no longer trapped. Martin tries to brush it off like he just didn't know what to do with it, which is true, except John also knows how much the game meant to Martin and how they're all falling apart.  
  
John does some quiet research and looks through several premade campaigns. He gathers all the information he can find, including how those campaigns have been run before and invites everyone to a game. Everyone shows up without really knowing what's going on. Martin is both hopeful and worried. Basira is angry, and Daisy is quiet. John asks them to try, and if it doesn't work, if it's too painful, they don't have to continue.  
  
At first it looks like that's what's going to happen, except John is a very different DM from Sasha. He doesn't try to lay false leads or hints at some greater mystery. He lays out just enough information to satisfy the rolls and quotes directly from the books, and leaves a whole lot more up to chance. Between that and the fact that they are all playing very different characters, by the end it doesn't feel like the same game.  
  
They agreed to come back and play again the following week.  
  
With the game Martin can't really pretends to be lonely. They don't have enough players for him to just abandon the game. This eventually frustrates Peter Lucas enough that he makes a mistake. He loses the bat with Elias before anything even happens, all because of a game of D&D.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] D&D in desperate situations [not-fic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23101057) by [GoLBPodfics (GodOfLaundryBaskets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GoLBPodfics)


End file.
